Story Highlights

Frankie and Mike get ready to celebrate their 20th anniversary — which should be a happy occasion, if Frankie can get over her fear that Mike is tiring of her, if Sue can get Axl to help with her planned party, and if they can all get Brick to snap out of the torpor he fell into when Axl gave away the ending of a book he wanted to read. As the show heads for its winter rest, here's one more thing it can celebrate: its continued status as TV's best traditional family comedy and best representation of real life in the Midwest. Admittedly, it pretty much has those two fields to itself, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't get credit for how well it surveys them.

Modern FamilyABC, 9 ET/PT

After a stop with The Neighbors, who are introduced to the human idea of death, it's on to TV's reigning best comedy, Modern Family. And one of the ways it retains that position is by mixing up the pairings of its characters, tonight teaming Claire and Cam on a renovation project and uniting Phil and Mitchell (two characters who don't interact all that often) against them.

CSICBS, 10 ET/PT

On the other hand, there are some pairings that should just be left alone. We may not see Grissom anymore on CSI, but his long-distance marriage to Sara at least keeps him in the show's fictional universe. So a plotline that finds Sara's marriage strained by the arrival of a former lover is likely to strike many as a plot begging for a pre-emptive strike.